methodwriter85

Chapter 39 -When the boys enjoy the touristy SF stuff. -When the boys ride the trolley. -When Will and Tony ride the ferry, and finally kiss. "Kiss the Girl" from The Little Mermaid -When Gathan and Kristin talk about the Turkey Day Dump, and pledge to make their way through it. Through sex. "Jamaica Say You Will" by Jackson Browne I saw this song on an episode of The Wonder Years, and loved it. Was the Wonder Years basically what your own adolescence was like, Mark? I heard the show basically nailed the Baby Boomer experience.

I get that 13-year olds have sex, and believe me I knew lots of 8th/9th graders that were doing it, including 9th graders who were going to clubs and tripping on X, but Will is so much more interesting when he's not having sexual adventures. Will talking about his love of marine life and having Tony talk about BMX biking was a 100 times more interesting and memorable than him stripping in a club, because it was Will as the person with real interests, not Will as the sexually precocious teenager. I think the other thing is, essentially- this is an introduction story. It's about introducing the next generation of Cramptons and Schluters and Hayes and how they all interact with one another. So there isn't a tight, concise narrative thread here like there were with Millenium or The Box. It's more slice-of-life stuff, which makes sense because we're back to following teenagers and not high-powered business executives. Yeah, they're high profile kids with one pursuing the Olympics, but they're still kids, and the day-to-day of going to school and having homework and trying to have fun with your friends all still apply.

So he'd be doing them just about now, in our time, then. Cool.

Well, Mark, it looks like you're getting some pretty solid answers here, with pretty good reasoning. What's your take now? In any event, it IS pretty cool that you're written characters people care enough about that we're debating over their fictional class schedules. I'm glad that people seem to agree on the schedule I picked out for JJ. LOL.Contemporary dance should be fun. I wonder if he'll get to learn hip-hop. "Save the Last Dance" was out at about this time. And without a doubt he'd take French- I think there's a very good chance JJ will become an ex-pat and move there. JJ would fit in well there- his attitude would just be taken as him being French. LOL.

Okay, so I took my computer to the ITech department at my school. They told me that the Windows Recovery boot is damaged, and they can't do anything without a Windows XP operating system disk. Problem is that I don't have my disks with me. I could ask my sister...but, err...I'm saving that for a last resort. Do you know where I could find a cheap, certified copy of Windows XP for a Dell laptop? It looks like the only thing they can do now is completely wipe the drive and reformat because the Recovery drive is damaged.

On the age thing, it made me think of something someone wrote to me when I was on online boards back when I was 14 or so years old. They told me that gay adult men can often be pretty uncomfortable around children, because of the way in which gay men get decried as child molestors and pedophiles. So they don't want to act too nice to kids, or else people would get suspicious. Peter Paige actually did a fairly funny movie once called "Say Uncle" about a town that decides that this man MUST be a pedophile because he's middle-aged and friendly to kids and, of course, gay. I wonder if that might behind why some people are just uncomfortable with the Will stuff- the scenes make them feel like a pedophile, regardless of how physically mature Will is, and it reminds them of some pretty harsh judgements they may have gotten from people who thought they just wanted to perve on little boys because they were gay.

Currently crushing on Cubbie Fink from Foster the People. I'm a sucker for his kinda look. And musicians are always sexy.

Mark? Response? Please?

Gathan's more along the lines of not seeing gender when it comes to attraction. It's different from the bisexuality of Andy Sharpe in Cross-Currents, where he distinctly needs both the male and female form in his life to be happy. Gathan isn't attracted to someone's sex- just whether he likes them or not. It's why if he gets married to a guy he won't need to be with women to be satisfied; if he gets married to a woman he won't need to have sex with men to feel fufilled.

We had two very prominent Catholic schools in our area, Sallies and St. Mark's. Sallies was an all-boys school known for its snobbery, arrogance, and homophobic treatment of people. We HATED their sports teams. St. Mark's was the co-educational school that was basically known for the fact that you could roll a joint in class and teachers didn't give a crap. You don't get much in the way of Christian fellowship there. I don't know, that doesn't really make sense. What would be the point in making Will take a foreign language if he already knows 3?

Me, too. And it does bother the hell out of me how some gay men tend to treat bisexuals as being confused and in denial about being gay. Adam Phillips has talked before about getting emails that told him that he needed to come out of the closet about being gay and the like. Ugh. I like the development of Tony so far- I like that he's interested in cooking and BMX biking. That's pretty cool. I also liked Will displaying his knowledge about marine life. Adds to the whole "different feel" of this generation as opposed to the Be Rad generation.

I came out when I was 14; fully accepted myself by seventeen. I've never really known what it was like to try and date girls to prove something to myself- I wasn't really going around saying, "Hi, I'm Jeremy and I'm gay", but I never tried the beard thing, either. It's interesting for me to see people for whom sexuality wasn't so clear and cut...I was kinda hoping for Tony to be along the lines of Matt in Cross-Currents...generally straight but with a few kinks thrown in there. That could cause some interesting issues- if you're guy who mainly responds to girls, but there's this thing you have for guys that you can't really ignore...well, I think that's pretty interesting because it's so outside of my own experience.

Not a bad tune. Hey, why don't you go ahead and put it in the fan music rec thread that I set up and asked for all of you to post at instead of in this one, okay? Cool!

It would actually be interesting if Tony was primarily straight, but it's just that 20 percent that haunts him...I don't think I want him to be totally gay. We already did that Jeff and I suppose Aaron.

In Cody's case, he was 25 when Alejandro was 15. With Tony being just 18, things get murkier. It's not uncommon at all for an 18-year old to mess around with someone underage. Is it wise? No, but it does happen. It does seem really dumb though because this is the post-Megan's Law era, and California seems like one of the more strict states about statutory rape/sex offenders.

Since Will is apparently fluent in French and Italian, would Harvard-Westlake basically exempt Will from needing to take a foreign language? *looks at Tommy, Tim, and Matt K for the answer*

I decided to go with the juxtaposition of innocent Disney songs with Will's blossoming sexuality. Besides, they're movies he grew up on. There really is a method to the madness here. LOL.

I gotta agree with you. Tony's the highlight of the chapter. And I'm hoping we focus back on Gathan once school starts up.

Right. It's a conflict. You have to hide the stuff that you do- JJ can't be that open about what he does the way the other members of the family can because everything has to happen behind closed doors while he maintains the image of the non-sexual figure skater. That's not hard now because he's only 14 and not particular sexual, but when he gets to about 17 or 18, I can imagine it'll be frustrating. For the mean time though, I think JJ has bought into what the image is, because he hasn't gotten to see yet all the crazy things that go on behind closed doors because they're behind closed doors and he's not getting invited behind them yet. It's going to be interesting. Mark's never really written a character before who has to be publically an asexual virgin for P.R. purposes- that's completely anathema to the way in which the family conducts themselves. LOL. I think JJ will like visits to Europe and develop an affection for it because the figure skaters there deal with much more relaxed expectations about behavior, and have the sort of orgy parties you're talking about. It'd be funny if JJ is like Johnny Weir in the sense that he "adopts" a Euro country the way Johnny adopted Russia, and affects the whole national persona. Will and an 18-year old guy who doesn't live in his area and has some closeted angst/daddy angst going on. I'm sure this will end well. LOL.

Chapter 38 -When Will trips over himself to try and impress Tony, the hot college boy from St. Louis. Mark, you have nooooo clue how much I've wanted to use this song. I honestly never thought I'd get a chance to use it because it didn't seem like the kind of song that could apply to Will, but thank god you chose to go this route with this chapter. I've been in love with this song since I was fourteen years old; THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!!*Gives Mark a big bear hug and a kiss on the cheek* -When Will shows off his marine life knowlege to Tony. - When Tony decides to cook dinner for his hosts. "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and The Beast

21. , 2001 In retrospect, the irony to this song is that it came in 2001, the last year of the boyband pop boom. (Until the Jonas Brothers came out in '06, but they were never as big as the Nsync/BSB juggernaut, I think.) 22. , 2001 Britney Spears at her prime. She made the whole "thong sticking up over low-riding jeans" really popular. 23. When it looked like after an iffy 2002 and early 2003, Britney was on the top of her game again... 24. , 2002 You. Could. Not. Escape. Avril. Seriously. She was promoted as the anti-Britney Spears, and people were ready for the boyband/blond pop princess era to be over, I think. 25. Hey Ya! by Outkast, 2003 This song was everywhere in 2003. Seriously. 26. 27. , 2003 I distinctly remembering being at the beach in early fall 2003, for a camping trip. This song came on, and one of my teammates let out an audible grasp of disgust. I remember straight guys HATED John Mayer back then. 28. Caring Is Creepy by The Shins, 2003 29. , 2003 30. , 2004

Right. I'm saying JJ himself is likely to be shy or prudish because of his prissy ways, and because it's embarrassing to be close to 15 and still not have really hit puberty yet. My voice didn't drop until I was 17. I got a lot of crap for that. He's lucky that he doesn't have to deal with locker room showers because he's not in a contact team sport that requires them. I grew up with sisters, so that may be why I never had any sort of inclination to watch them have sex. The stray thought to watch might have come into JJ's mind, but he shrugged his narrow shoulders and went back to plotting his 2006 Olympic plans. I like the innocence about JJ. It adds to the late bloomer feeling of him- his brother and his cousin have become young men, but he's very much still a child, and he's in a sport that encourages you to stay asexual and virginial. That should lead to some interesting conflicts later on when he finally starts to "bloom", so to speak.

I think if JJ said that he hadn't seen Will's junk before, we should take him for his word. Maybe there were occasional swim trunk slips, but likely JJ quickly averted his eyes and all of that. He's never struck me as someone that would be all that casual about nudity, given JJ's general prissiness. I thought the scene played out very realistically for a guy who's lagging behind his peers in development, and wanted to see how he stacked up against his VERY developed brother. Tony seems like he'll add an interesting mix. It's nice to add legacy characters. The angst about his dad dying of AIDS and his own possible homosexuality seems like some interesting territory to explore.

Great point. They'd probably have their own personal cabanas/shower rooms on the beach. Because Brad was curious about what sexual orientation Will had, so he was actively listening in on what went on in Will's bedroom? And JJ might have heard, but I don't know how much of an inclination he would have had to actually watch his sibling have sex. I know I sure as hell wouldn't want to watch any of my sisters having sex. Any time I heard the sounds of sex coming from my sister's room, I turned up the music on my CD player to blare music, or I turned up the television volume. The other thing, that's been strongly hinted at, is that JJ has pretty much isolated himself with all the figure skating stuff, and thus he just plain wasn't paying attention with whatever is going on in Will's room because he's practicing a single stance for hours on end in his own room.

I have to agree with Mark. This isn't a jock boy household like the Hayes family is, and we're also talking about a generation of guys who did not grow up with the mandatory junior high school gym shower with everyone under the same spigot. And so far JJ has been written as a pretty prissy guy - I imagine that if he DID have to take a shower- maybe during swimming week in gym- he'd keep his towel around his waist while he changed out of his swimsuit and put his boxers on. If JJ and Will were into the same kind of sports and played on the same team together, I do think it would have been inevitable, but that hasn't been the case. I think Tony can be interesting- there's a great backstory there.